


How To Be A Heartbreaker

by FictionPenned



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Episode: s12e01-02 Spyfall, Other, Pre-Episode: s12e01 Spyfall Part 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:54:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25886143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FictionPenned/pseuds/FictionPenned
Summary: The Master drapes himself in cloying, saccharine sweetness. The Doctor tends to fall for the awestruck, the inspired, those humans who find themselves head-over-heels in love with them and the TARDIS and the promise of the unknown. Therefore, the Master's new self is scientifically-minded, open to the possibility of worlds and phenomena that exist beyond his quaint, human understanding, and in possession of a mind malleable enough that it allows the Doctor the illusion of influence. Though that quiet, nervous submission runs against the most fundamental elements of his nature, he embraces it, leans in, leverages it in order to build a narrative.The Master catfishes the Doctor and finds himself falling a bit too deeply into the character that he's created.
Relationships: Eleventh Doctor/The Master (Dhawan), The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 85





	How To Be A Heartbreaker

The Master is no stranger to disguise. 

Thus, when he sets his newest scheme in motion, he starts in the same way that he almost always does — by slipping from one lie into the next, crafting a persona with a formidable attention to detail. For this particular plan to succeed, he must not only be able to withstand considerable scrutiny, but to bargain for the Doctor's affection. It is the perfect one-two punch. He needs to hold his old friend's hearts in his hands, to revel in the moment when his efforts pay off and his true self is revealed, to force the Doctor to stare up at him and feel the true _weight_ of that love as he sends its ruins collapsing down around them. 

He doesn’t just want to deceive the Doctor, he wants to hurt them. He wants them to suffer the way he has suffered, and to do that, he needs them to fear him, to envy him, to utterly _despise_ him. 

It is a goal that requires both patience and precision. 

The Master drapes himself in cloying, saccharine sweetness. The Doctor tends to fall for the awestruck, the inspired, those humans who find themselves head-over-heels in love with them and the TARDIS and the promise of the unknown. Therefore, the Master's new self is scientifically-minded, open to the possibility of worlds and phenomena that exist beyond his quaint, human understanding, and in possession of a mind malleable enough that it allows the Doctor the illusion of influence. Though that quiet, nervous submission runs against the most fundamental elements of his nature, he embraces it, leans in, leverages it in order to build a narrative.

In fact, he builds two _separate_ narratives — a tale for the truth and a tale for the lies that enable it. At once, he is both the secret leader of a centuries-old empire of his own design _and_ the perfect human bait for a gullible renegade Time Lord. He slips between the two identities in secret, conducts a few back-alley deals, makes sure that his alibi is airtight. There is no one who could possibly leak his identity to the Doctor, no one who can interrupt his plans, no one who can unseat his greatness.

If the Master is going to masquerade as a human for a while, he prefers to do so in proximity to power. He can’t wield much of it, of course, the Doctor would _hate_ that, but he wants to be near it, breathe it in, have direct access to the kind of secrets that are generally denied to the public. He has worked in government before, of course, and as dreadfully tedious as it often was, it possesses a base familiarity that speaks to memories of _home_. 

Rank is familiar, gathering intelligence is familiar, undercover operations are familiar, and slipping into the ranks at MI6 is a great deal easier when one has both 2000 years of practical experience and a touch of hypnotism on their side. 

As such, the stage is set. 

This will be a long game, and the first encounter with the Doctor is key. The Master is careful to time his entrance perfectly. 

Picking a first day of work is tricky business. The Doctor rarely drops by MI6, a habit that can be directly linked to vague arguments about ethics and morality, as well as a projected (but false) distaste for conspiracy. However, the Master knows that there is a day in October when the wind is crisp and moisture hangs heavy in the air that the Doctor will stumble through the front doors in search of information, blowing past security and subtly insulting everyone in his path. 

The Master picks that day as his first day, and he plants himself directly into the Doctor’s path. He hears the Doctor coming before he can see him — loudly effusing about the many benefits of donning a bow tie — and he takes a breath and turns his back to the noise, lifting a single foot off the ground and rolling onto his toes in order to purposefully throw himself off-balance. 

When the Doctor carelessly collides with him, the Master falls to the ground, sending a stack of hiring papers flying into the air like the ashes of a burning planet. 

(The ashes of _their_ burning planet.) 

The Doctor’s bumbling apology cuts through the Master’s bitterness, conveyed by way of a vague and self-obsessed series of phrases that suggests that the Doctor doesn’t mean an ounce of what he’s saying, but he offers the Master a hand to help him up anyway. 

First they lock hands, and then they lock eyes, and the Master allows himself to fall into the character that he has so fastidiously crafted. 

He allows himself to fall in _love_. 

His eyes sweep away coyly as the heat of embarrassment curls up his face — an easy condition to fake with two hearts — and quietly murmurs, “Thank you. Terribly sorry. It’s my first day, see, and I don’t really know where I’m going.” 

“ _Oh_ , no, it was my fault, really. Never one to keep an eye out, me,” the Doctor replies, and still, it is incredibly obvious that he is simply going through the motions. The Doctor always says what he thinks he ought to say, does what he thinks he ought to do, walks through the motions without thought about whether or not it’s who he is or what he wants, but the Master knows who the Doctor is. There’s a bit of the Doctor in him, after all, a piece that signifies that the Doctor has always been more important than him, a piece that he resents and would claw out if he could. 

He swallows back his rage and blinks once, allowing innocent curiosity to fill his gaze instead. “Do you work here?” he asks, leaning over to pick up the fallen papers, angling himself to make absolutely sure that the Doctor is _watching_. 

He is. 

“No. Just passing through. Had a bone to pick with one of the higher-ups. Very rude chap, but that’s a conversation meant for different ears, I suppose.” Fingers sweep through floppy bangs as the Doctor shifts restlessly from foot-to-foot, and the Master straightens, desperately trying to appear interested in his best enemy’s petty grudges. 

“Anything I should know about as a new hire?” There’s a quirk of a false smile at the corner of the Master’s lips, and he smoothes out the wrinkled tuck of his shirt with his free hand. 

“Probably not, but I’ll let you know if that changes.” There’s a small pause before the Doctor thinks to ask the obvious. “Do you have a name?” 

The Master’s smile broadens, and he turns his eyes demurely towards the ground again. “They’re calling me _O_ , I think. Bit of a red letter, so I’ve heard, but I’m not exactly in a position to question it.” 

That isn’t true. He picked his name himself, and he picked it precisely because he wants to see the Doctor’s mouth wrap around it in delight and pleasure and horror in turn. 

_Oh. O. Oh_.

“What do they call you?” he asks the Doctor, lifting his eyes and raising his brows and anticipating an answer that he already knows. 

“I’m the Doctor.”

“Is that a codename, too?” 

There’s a flicker of a wink and a breath of laughter and a glee at being the most mysterious person in the room as the Doctor answers, “No, I’m just the Doctor.” 

The Master simply nods. “Nice to meet you then, just the Doctor. I suppose I’ll see you around.” 

He turns on his heel with the clearly projected intention of going about the rest of his mundane and dull day, but he barely manages to take a step down the hallway before the Doctor says, “Wait.” 

Smugness spreads throughout the Master’s chest and lingers there — warm and bright and positively delicious — but he buries it beneath the guise of sweet, naive confusion as he glances back over her shoulder. “Yes?” 

The Doctor pats his pockets — finding first a corkscrew and then with a small pair of jewelers pliers before he finally locates a pen. Without asking first, he steps forward and scribbles a number on the top sheet of the Master’s recently re-collated entry packet. His handwriting is lopsided, messy, somehow both tight and loose at the same time. “Shoot me a text if you need me.” 

The smugness deepens as the Master lifts his eyes to his old friend’s. “If I need you?” 

“You know, if something comes up.” There’s a great flourishing of hands as the Doctor moves to put his pen away, sweeping away the words that he is too afraid to speak. 

It requires every ounce of the Master’s self-control to keep from disdainfully curling his upper lip at the gesture. “I’ll shoot you a text later then, once I’m off work.” 

There is a bit of a bounce and a forward lean and a gleam in the Doctor’s eyes as he replies, “I look forward to it.”

From that point onward, things become _dreadfully_ easy.

The Doctor has always been prone to surrounding himself with people who could never _possibly_ understand him, and it is easy for the Master to slip in and smooth over those cracks with a couple of smooth, calculated words. He makes the Doctor feel adored, valued, supported in a way that no one else in the universe can. He makes his presence vital, makes sure that he will never be cast aside and forgotten. He twists the Doctor around his finger, whispers quicksilver lies into his ear, pulls the Doctor tighter and tighter into his orbit. 

Even though it is outrageously simple work, it is still a slow process. 

He spends ages slaving away as a human in order to see things through, but a couple of years in, he manages to carve out a little niche for himself in MI6. He devotes himself to the snide study of the paranormal, a pursuit that serves two purposes. It allows him to spend his days reading up on and collecting data on the Doctor, and it all but ensures that his dull human colleagues will leave him alone. 

The Doctor mostly texts him during those long nights when his strays are asleep. 

They fill each other’s phones with meaningless drivel about physics and astronomy and art and puzzles. They have conversations that span from the beginning of the universe to its very end. Most importantly of all, they fall more and more thoroughly into each other. He rides out first one of the Doctor’s regenerations and then another, and it is only when a bright-eyed, blonde selfie graces his phone that he quits his job and disappears into the remote wilds of the Australian Outback. 

His moment is getting close. He can sense it. Years and years of hard work and dedication are _finally_ going to pay off. 

The Doctor picks up a new set of pets in Sheffield. She says that she likes these ones, but he has poked and prodded and learned that she is purposefully holding them at arm’s length. She is terrified of losing people, terrified of scaring them, terrified of being herself, and that’s perfectly fine with him. It allows him to spin her even more tightly against the web that he has so carefully been weaving. 

He is soft with her, vulnerable even, and she is vulnerable back. 

She whispers secrets in the dark, and he files each and every one of them away for later. 

After a while, however, the Master starts to feel himself slipping — not out of character, but too deeply into it. The warmth that floods his hearts is no longer the smug satisfaction of a trap well laid, but a silent yearning, a quiet thrill, a screaming desire to succumb to the creeping fondness that has so long plagued him. 

In theory, he could keep doing this forever. She’ll never notice that he is merely acting, never know the truth, but he is painfully aware that he will never be fulfilled by simply being another link in her long chain of human interests. Every part of him cries out for recognition. He wants to be seen. He wants her to say his name. He wants to watch the moment when it all comes crashing down. 

The Master wants to watch her fall at his feet. 

Because of him. 

For _him_. 

He _needs_ her to fall, if only to justify his own descent. He needs to reach out and pull her under so that they can drown in this together. It’s not fair that he should he gasping for air while she gets to pretend that nothing is wrong, that she doesn’t care about him, that she never _did_. 

The Master waits for the right time — stalks out a moment of extreme weakness, a moment when she’s caught herself flirting too closely with the darkness that shades her hearts, a moment when she reaches out not for company, but for _reassurance_. 

As time piles up and leaves him spinning in its wake, he grows more and more restless, more and more angry, more and more resentful. 

And then, finally, the moment comes.

**Just The Doctor:** I’ve done something terrible. 

The Master smiles to himself, types his reply, and then with a couple of quick phone calls, he begins to set his plan into motion. 

She’ll call him for help soon. 

He’ll lure her here. 

He’ll play his part and dance her dance and he’ll finally get a chance to watch her fall, too. 

He’s been careful, all the pieces are in their places, and it’s impossible for anything to go wrong. 


End file.
